The Shark-Infested Custard was written in the early 1970s but not published until 1993, five years after Willeford’s death. Multiple publishers rejected it during his lifetime — the content was too extreme, the moral vision too bleak — and its posthumous publication confirmed that Willeford had been writing material that was decades ahead of what the market would accept.
The novel follows four men — Larry, Don, Hank, and Eddie — who live in a Miami singles apartment complex. They are young, employed, reasonably attractive, and profoundly empty. Their competition for sexual conquests and social status escalates from harmless boasting through increasingly disturbing acts until it crosses into genuine criminality. Willeford’s achievement is to make the escalation feel inevitable rather than contrived: each transgression follows logically from the last, and the social dynamics of the group — the fear of appearing weak, the compulsion to top each other — provide the mechanism.
The novel is told in rotating first-person chapters, each narrated by one of the four men. The technique reveals how each man justifies his behavior — the rationalizations, the self-deceptions, the casual cruelty that passes for masculinity in their world. Willeford does not judge; he simply presents, and the accumulation of detail is damning.
Collecting The Shark-Infested Custard
First edition (Underwood-Miller, San Francisco, 1993): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $60–$150
- Very good/very good: $25–$60